Kipps The Story of a Simple Soul

KIPPS

And all this talk impressed the imagination of Kipps very greatly. Here was a class that seemed to bridge the gulf. On the one hand essentially Low, but by factitious circumstances capable of entering upon those levels of social superiority to which all true Englishmen aspire, those levels from which one may tip a butler, scorn a tailor, and even commune with those who lead “men” into battle. “Almost like gentlefolks” – that was it! He brooded over these things in the afternoon, until they blossomed into daydreams. Suppose, for example, he had chanced to write a book, a well-known book, under an assumed name, and yet kept on being a draper all the time.... Impossible, of course, but suppose – it made quite a long dream.

And at the next wood-carving class he let it be drawn from him that his real choice in life was to be a Nawther –”only one doesn’t get a chance.”

After that there were times when Kipps had that pleasant sense that comes of attracting interest. He was a mute, inglorious Dickens, or at any rate something of that sort, and they were all taking him at that. The discovery of this indefinable “something in” him, the development of which was now painfully restricted and impossible, did much to bridge the gulf between himself and Miss Walshingham. He was unfortunate, he was futile, but he was not “common.” Even now with help...? The two girls, and the freckled girl in particular, tried to “stir him up” to some effort to do his imputed potentialities justice. They were still young enough to believe that to nice and niceish members of the male sex – more especially when under the stimulus of feminine encouragement – nothing is finally impossible.

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The freckled girl was, I say, the stage manager of this affair, but Miss Walshingham was the presiding divinity. A touch of proprietorship came in her eyes at times when she looked at him. He was hers – unconditionally – and she knew it.

To her directly Kipps scarcely ever made a speech. The enterprising things that he was continually devising to say to her, he usually did not say, or he said them in a suitably modified form to the girl with the freckles. And one day the girl with the freckles smote him to the heart. She said to him, with the faintest indication of her head across the class-room to where her friend reached a cast from the shelf, “I do think Helen Walshingham is sometimes the most lovely person in the world. Look at her now!”

Kipps gasped for a moment. The moment lengthened, and she regarded him as an intelligent young surgeon might regard an operation without anæsthetics.

“You’re right,” he said, and then looked at her with an entire abandonment of visage.

She coloured under his glare of silent avowal, and he blushed brightly.

“I think so, too,” he said hoarsely, cleared his throat, and after a meditative moment proceeded sacramentally with his wood-carving.

“You are wonderful,” said the freckled girl to Miss Walshingham, apropos of nothing, as they went on their way home together. “He simply adores you.”

“But, my dear, what have I done?” said Helen.

“That’s just it,” said the freckled girl. “What have you done?”

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KIPPS

And then with a terrible swiftness came the last class of the course, to terminate this relationship altogether. Kipps was careless of dates, and the thing came upon him with an effect of abrupt surprise. Just as his petals were expanding so hopefully, “Finis,” and the thing was at an end. But Kipps did not fullyappreciate that the end was indeed and really and truly the end, until he was back in the Emporium after the end was over.

The end began practically in the middle of the last class, when the freckled girl broached the topic of terminations. She developed the question of just how he was going on after the class ended. She hoped he would stick to certain resolutions of self-improvement he had breathed. She said quite honestly that he owed it to himself to develop his possibilities. He expressed firm resolve, but dwelt on difficulties. He had no books. She instructed him how to get books from the public library. He was to get a form of application for a ticket signed by a ratepayer; and he said “of course,” when she said Mr. Shalford would do that, though all the time he knew perfectly well it would “never do” to ask Mr. Shalford for anything of the sort. She explained that she was going to North Wales for the summer, information he received without immediate regret. At intervals he expressed his intention of going on with wood-carving when the summer was over, and once he added “If –”

She considered herself extremely delicate not to press for the completion of that “if –”

After that talk there was an interval of languid wood-carv- ing and watching Miss Walshingham.

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Then presently there came a bustle of packing, a great ceremony of hand-shaking all round by Miss Collis and the maiden lady of ripe years, and then Kipps found himself outside the class-room, on the landing with his two friends. It seemed to him he had only just learnt that this was the last class of all. There came a little pause, and the freckled girl suddenly went back into the class-room, and left Kipps and Miss Walshingham alone together for the first time. Kipps was instantly breathless. She looked at his face with a glance that mingled sympathy and curiosity, and held out her white hand.

“Well, good-bye, Mr. Kipps,” she said.

He took her hand and held it. “I’d do anything,” said Kipps, and had not the temerity to add, “for you.” He stopped awkwardly. He shook her hand and said, “Good-bye.”

There was a little pause.

“I hope you will have a pleasant holiday,” she said.

“I shall come back to the class next year, anyhow,” said Kipps valiantly, and turned abruptly to the stairs.

“I hope you will,” said Miss Walshingham.

He turned back towards her. “Reelly?” he said. “I hope everybody will come back.”

“I will – anyhow,” said Kipps. “You may count on that,” and he tried to make his tones significant.

They looked at one another through a little pause. “Good-bye,” she said.

Kipps lifted his hat. She turned towards the class-room. “Well?” said the freckled girl, coming back towards her. “Nothing,” said Helen. “At least – presently.” And she be-

came very energetic about some scattered tools on a desk.

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CHAPTER IV

CHITTERLOW

I

The hour of the class on the following Thursday found Kipps in a state of nearly incredible despondency. He was sitting with his eyes on the reading room clock, his chin resting on his fists and his elbows on the accumulated comic papers that were comic alas! in vain! He paid no heed to the little man in spectacles glaring opposite to him, famishing for Fun. In this place it was he had sat night after night, each night more blissful than the last, waiting until it should be time to go to Her! And then – bliss! And now the hour had come and there was no class! There would be no class now until next October; it might be there would never be a class so far as he was concerned again.

It might be there would never be a class again, for Shalford, taking exception at a certain absent-mindedness that led to mistakes and more particularly to the ticketing of several articles in Kipps’ Manchester window upside down, had been “on to” him for the past few days in an exceedingly onerous manner....

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KIPPS

He sighed profoundly, pushed the comic papers back – they were rent away from him instantly by the little man in spectacles – and tried the old engravings of Folkestone in the past, that hang about the room. But these, too, failed to minister to his bruised heart. He wandered about the corridors for a time and watched the library indicator for awhile. Wonderful thing that! But it did not hold him for long. People came and laughed near him and that jarred with him dreadfully. He went out of the building and a beastly cheerful barrel organ mocked him in the street. He was moved to a desperate resolve to go down to the beach. There it might be he would be alone. The sea might be rough – and attuned to him. It would certainly be dark.

“If I ‘ad a penny I’m blest if I wouldn’t go and chuck myself off the end of the pier.... She’d never miss me....” He followed a deepening vein of thought.

“Penny though! It’s tuppence,” he said after a space.

He went down Dover Street in a state of profound melancholia – at the pace and mood as it were of his own funeral procession – and he crossed at the corner of Tontine Street heedless of all mundane things. And there it was that Fortune came upon him, in disguise and with a loud shout, the shout of a person endowed with an unusually rich, full voice, followed immediately by a violent blow in the back.

His hat was over his eyes and an enormous weight rested on his shoulders and something kicked him in the back of his calf.

Then he was on all fours in some mud that Fortune, in conjunction with the Folkestone corporation and in the pur-

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suit of equally mysterious ends, had heaped together even lavishly for his reception.

He remained in that position for some seconds awaiting further developments and believing almost anything broken before his heart. Gathering at last that this temporary violence of things in general was over, and being perhaps assisted by a clutching hand, he arose, and found himself confronting a figure holding a bicycle and thrusting forward a dark face in anxious scrutiny.

“You aren’t hurt, Matey?” gasped the figure. “Was that you ‘it me?” said Kipps.

“It’s these handles, you know,” said the figure with an air of being a fellow sufferer. “They’re too low. And when I go to turn, if I don’t remember, Bif! – and I’m in to something.”

“Well – you give me a oner in the back – anyhow,” said Kipps, taking stock of his damages.

“I was coming down hill, you know,” explained the bicyclist. “These little Folkestone hills are a Fair Treat. It isn’t as though I’d been on the level. I came rather a whop.”

“You did that,” said Kipps.

“I was back pedalling for all I was worth anyhow,” said the bicyclist. “Not that I am worth much back pedalling.”

He glanced round and made a sudden movement almost as if to mount his machine. Then he turned as rapidly to Kipps again, who was now stooping down, pursuing the tale of his injuries.

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KIPPS

“Here’s the back of my trouser leg all tore down,” said Kipps, “and I believe I’m bleeding. You reely ought to be more careful –”

The stranger investigated the damage with a rapid movement. “Holy Smoke, so you are!” He laid a friendly hand on Kipps’ arm. “I say – look here! Come up to my diggings and sew it up. I’m – . Of course I’m to blame, and I say –” his voice sank to a confidential friendliness. “Here’s a slop. Don’t let on I ran you down. Haven’t a lamp, you know. Might be a bit awkward, for me.”

Kipps looked up towards the advancing policeman. The appeal to his generosity was not misplaced. He immediately took sides with his assailant. He stood up as the representative of the law drew nearer. He assumed an air which he considered highly suggestive of an accident not having happened.

“All right,” he said, “go on!”

“Right you are,” said the cyclist promptly, and led the way, and then, apparently with some idea of deception, called over his shoulder, “I’m tremendous glad to have met you, old chap.

“It really isn’t a hundred yards,” he said after they had passed the policeman, “it’s just round the corner.”

“Of course,” said Kipps, limping slightly. “I don’t want to get a chap into trouble. Accidents will happen. Still –”

“Oh! rather! I believe you. Accidents will happen. Especially when you get me on a bicycle.” He laughed. “You aren’t the first I’ve run down not by any manner of means! I don’t think you can be hurt much either. It isn’t as though I was scorching. You didn’t see me coming. I was back pedalling like anything. Only naturally it seems to you I must have been coming fast.

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And I did all I could to ease off the bump as I hit you. It was just the treadle I think came against your calf. But it was All Right of you about that policeman, you know. That was a Fair Bit of All Right. Under the Circs, if you’d told him I was riding it might have been forty bob! Forty bob! I’d have had to tell ‘em Time is Money. Just now for Mr. H. C.

“I shouldn’t have blamed you either, you know. Most men after a bump like that might have been spiteful. The least I can do is to stand you a needle and thread. And a clothes brush. It isn’t everyone who’d have taken it like you.

“Scorching! Why if I’d been scorching you’d have – coming as we did – you’d have been knocked silly.

“But I tell you, the way you caught on about that slop was something worth seeing. When I asked you, I didn’t half expect it. Bif! Right off. Cool as a cucumber. Had your line at once. I tell you that there isn’t many men would have acted as you have done, I will say that. You acted like a gentleman over that slop.”

Kipps’ first sense of injury disappeared. He limped along a pace or so behind, making depreciatory noises in response to these flattering remarks and taking stock of the very appreciative person who uttered them.

As they passed the lamps he was visible as a figure with a slight anterior plumpness, progressing buoyantly on knickerbockered legs, with quite enormous calves, legs that, contrasting with Kipps’ own narrow practice, were even exuberantly turned out at the knees and toes. A cycling cap was worn very much on one side, and from beneath it protruded carelessly straight wisps of dark red hair, and ever and again an ample

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